Limitations

Some SparkLayer features depend on what BigCommerce supports. This page lists what works differently on BigCommerce. To check a feature across all platforms, see Compare platforms.

Products and stock

Limitation	Details
Product SKUs	Every product must have a SKU, and it must be unique to that product.
Product-level stock	SparkLayer works with stock tracked per variant, so avoid tracking stock at product level where you can. If a product with several variants tracks stock at product level, SparkLayer shows the whole product's stock level against each variant. If a customer then adds variants whose total quantity is more than the product's stock, they see a "Something went wrong" error and can't continue.
Negative stock and pre-orders	BigCommerce doesn't allow stock to go below zero, so SparkLayer can't take pre-orders for stock that isn't available yet. The same applies to quotes: a quote can't be placed without enough stock to fulfil it.
Modifier options	BigCommerce modifier options (in the Customizations section when you edit a product) don't appear in the frontend interfaces. SparkLayer only shows the variants set up in the product's Variations section, such as size or colour.
Custom line items	SparkLayer's custom line items feature isn't supported on BigCommerce.

Pricing and discounts

Limitation	Details
Price lists	Price lists can only be managed in SparkLayer. Changes to price lists in BigCommerce don't apply to SparkLayer.
Promotions	BigCommerce discounts, such as order-level discounts and promotional codes, can't be used with SparkLayer. Use the SparkLayer Discount Engine instead. We're reviewing this for a future update.

Customers and sales agents

Limitation	Details
Company users	When a customer invites a team member as a company user, the team member doesn't get a confirmation email. Tell them which email address to sign in with, and ask them to use Forgot password on your store to set a password.

Multi-storefront

SparkLayer doesn't officially support BigCommerce multi-storefront (opens in a new tab). It works in most cases, with these limits:

Only one customer with a given email address can exist across all the storefronts (channels) you use with SparkLayer.
Products, customers and orders from every storefront share one SparkLayer site.
A customer shares one SparkLayer site across all storefronts. To avoid invalid BigCommerce carts, either assign each customer to one storefront at a time, or make sure they finish checking out on one storefront before adding products on another.
Each storefront needs its own numeric igniteCheckoutContext.channel_id value, set in an extra field in the SparkLayer Core Script options. This is a code change for your developer.

Checkout, shipping and tax

Limitation	Details
Multi-zone tax	SparkLayer supports multi-zone tax set up in BigCommerce, as long as at least one of these is true: Prices entered with tax is set to No, I will enter prices exclusive of tax, or When calculating the taxes on sales made outside this storefronts default tax zone is set to Update product prices to reflect applicable tax rates.
Tax price display setting	The How are prices displayed on your storefront setting affects how shipping costs appear in the cart. SparkLayer updates it automatically when you install the app or change the Prices entered with tax setting. If you change it on its own, SparkLayer isn't updated and shipping costs display incorrectly. Contact us before you change it.
SparkLayer shipping and card payments	You can only use SparkLayer shipping on BigCommerce if Card at checkout is turned off in your customer groups' Payment methods. When an order goes through the BigCommerce checkout to pay online by card, BigCommerce replaces SparkLayer's shipping methods with your store's default shipping rules.
Shipping cost display	If your tax zone shows prices including tax, the costs in the SparkLayer cart's shipping method list use the cart's overall tax rate, not any shipping-specific tax rate. This only affects the costs shown in that list. The shipping cost in the cart summary comes from BigCommerce and is correct.